


want to hold you high and steal away your pain

by leitmotifs (orphan_account)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe, Angst, M/M, Mentions of Eating Disorder, Self harming behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-27
Updated: 2013-08-27
Packaged: 2017-12-24 19:08:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/943588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/leitmotifs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(That’s not what the voices say, and Niall loves Louis but best friends are supposed to tell you things like that. Niall nods wordlessly whenever he hears it, but he knows; it’s his fault his parents didn’t love him, it’s his fault he’s never good enough.)</p><p>(He thinks there’s some saying that goes, <i> we accept the love we think we deserve</i>.)</p><p>(This is a love he knows he deserves.)</p><p>Or: Niall and Harry are both a little broken, but somehow fall in love anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	want to hold you high and steal away your pain

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompts:  
>   
> [on tumblr](http://justlogorrheic.tumblr.com/post/59452446741/want-to-hold-you-high-and-steal-away-your-pain)

Niall will never, ever tell a soul, but this is an idea he fancies: waking to a comforting warmth against his side and a protective arm wrapped around his waist; waking up to kisses being peppered down his neck and sleepy whispers against his skin; waking up cold because the sheets have been kicked to the floor and moving in closer against that chest, seeking warmth.

Niall will never, ever tell a soul, but this is how things are: waking to a hand curled tightly around the fabric of his t-shirt, as if to stop him from leaving; waking up to his cheeks feeling dry from crying the night before; waking up with a scream on the tip of his tongue, easing his mind from the nightmare’s grips only to return him to another hell.

It should be so easy to leave, to realize that _this isn’t healthy for you_ , and he has friends who are constantly telling him _we can help, please let us help_ ; Liam offers him a place to stay, Zayn vows to beat the guy’s fucking face in, and Louis – Louis is the one who’s always there afterwards, bandaging his wounds and helping him cover up the bruise on his jaw and holding his hand and whispering, “You deserve so much better _._ ”

(That’s not what the voices say, and Niall loves Louis but best friends are supposed to tell you things like that. Niall nods wordlessly whenever he hears it, but he knows; it’s his fault his parents didn’t love him, it’s his fault he’s never good enough.)

(He thinks there’s some saying that goes _we accept the love we think we deserve_.)

(This is a love he knows he deserves.)

_

And one day, Niall wakes up to an empty bed.

The apartment is wiped clean of any evidence that another person had been living there.

He doesn’t call Louis up because he doesn’t want to hear the inevitable _I told you so_ and instead calls Zayn, because Zayn is the most level-headed and least likely to ask question among the four of them.

Except Zayn, when he finds Niall on his couch in the quiet apartment with tear tracks on his face and the bruises on his arms and thighs from the night before, the dark-haired boy storms right back out.

Liam and Louis arrive within the hour, and they calm Niall down from his pacing and ease his fingers from his hair and tell him, “It’s okay, Zayn’s taken care of him. We won’t let him hurt you anymore, Niall.”

(Somewhere between his choked sobs and hiccupping breaths, Niall hopes he said the _thank you_ s that have been building since high school, when Liam invited him to sit at their lunch table where he ate for the first time, instead of spending the period in the bathroom, sticking two fingers down his throat.)

_

Harry grows up hearing things like _unable to focus extensively_ and _challenging to work with_ and _loud_ and _argumentative._

That’s what he hears, spoken in hushed whispers, but Harry isn’t stupid and he knows that what they really mean is _frustrating_ and _rude_ and _temperamental_ and _uncontrollable._

They load him up with pills – this red one to help him focus, this blue one to make him feel happier. Harry takes them in their little white bottles, pretends to be grateful, and when his parents aren’t home, he flushes them down the toilet and screams until his throat is hoarse, pounds his fists against the wall and kicks the sink and wonders as hot tears spill down his cheeks, _whenwillanyonehearmewhydon’ttheylistenwhywhywhywhywh—_

Harry gets through high school by sitting on his twitching fingers, nearly pulling out his hair in frustration as he struggles to _listen to what the teacher is saying, you fucking idiot,_ biting his lip until it bleeds so he doesn’t make some offhand remark during class.

It works, _it works_ , but at his expense and by the time he graduates high school and deemed _fixed enough_ he smiles and thanks them and takes the first train out of that goddamn city.

Halfway across the country his car breaks down and he spends an hour in a screaming match against the wind and the busted engine.

The first car to stop for him is this woman who looks in her forties, and she gives him the most sympathetic look when she opens her door and asks, “Are you okay, sweetheart?”

He has that face, he’s been told, the kind that makes people want to do anything he wants. Harry feels no remorse about using this to his advantage; when he weaves a lie about his car breaking down on his way to visit his ailing grandparents and the woman offers to drop him off in the next town, he smiles gratefully and accepts.

It’s a two hour drive to the next town, and when she lets him off, she claps his shoulder tightly and gives him a wad of cash.

Harry fakes surprise, and after he lets her convince him for a few minutes, he accepts the cash too and thanks her again.

She drives off and becomes an obscure memory in the back of Harry’s mind.

He wonders when he’s turned into… _this_ , this liar, this unmitigated, manipulative prick, but at the same time he wonders why some people are such gullible idiots.

_

It takes about a month for the nightmares to start slowing down.

_

It takes about a month for the itching feeling of being _chained down_ to finally wear away.

_

It’s an hour until closing when Harry enters the diner and takes a seat in one of the corner booths. He waits fifteen minutes that feel like fifteen hours, hair fisted in his hands and forehead pressed into the cool surface of the table.

He was fired from working at the grocery store, the third lost job this month, and this morning his hot water hadn’t been working and he couldn’t find his favorite jacket and he had stubbed his toe against a table that had been in the way.

He’s angry, he’s pissed, he’s _furious_ , and when he hears a voice timidly ask, “Can I help you, sir?” the dam breaks. He slams his fist down the table and swipes it across, sending the salt and pepper shakers flying. He screams, “ _Leave me alone_!”

He feels it all at once, the stares boring into the back of his head. He can already hear the whispers starting, and they morph into the voices of his mother and his father and his teachers and his counselors.

He looks up, fists clenched and chest heaving.

The background noise stops.

“I-I’m sor—“

The boy is whisked away before he can finish, and replaced by an angry looking brunet. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he seethes.

His nametag reads _Louis_ and Harry hates him immediately.

He doesn’t want to see Louis; he wants to see bright blond hair and blue eyes, but the boy has disappeared now.

Harry bites out a “sorry” that he doesn’t mean and leaves.

_

He returns the next day, but doesn’t actually come in. On his way to the store, he passes the diner, and through the windows he sees the same blond boy wiping down a table.

In the middle of the sidewalk, Harry forgets where he’s going. He ends up late for his job interview at the library, and even though he gets it anyway, it doesn’t cross his mind once that night.

_

He had pretty blond hair that reminds Harry of the sunshine, and he wants to reach up and

( _grabbed his hair and slammed him against the wall and shouted, “What the fuck is wrong with you, why can’t you sit still, why can’t you be normal—”_ )

run his fingers gently through them and find out if they feel as soft as they look.

He had blue eyes that Harry’s seen up close only once, and he’s forgotten exactly what shade they were – he thinks they may have been baby blue or cerulean, but he hates being unsure of anything.

Harry turns up one Saturday morning, just a few minutes after the diner opens. He adjusts his favorite jacket and makes sure he has the two ice creams cones well balance and announces his entrances with a clear of his throat.

The blond boy looks up from his cleaning, and Harry feels it for the second time, feels his whole world stop spinning. His name tag reads _Niall_.

He holds out the ice cream cone and smiles even though it comes out a little awkward. “I got you ice cream,” he says.

_Niall. Niall. NiallNiallNiall._

He hadn’t known what flavor to get, so he went with vanilla; he figured that Niall could just add whatever toppings he likes.

But Niall doesn’t take it, doesn’t even smile back, and they stand in a staring match for minutes until Harry’s fingers dig too hard into the cone, sending it to the floor in a heap of ice cream and crumbs.

He leaves in a hurry, cheeks bright red and mind running a thousand miles per hour, that familiar feeling of suffocation crawling up his throat.

_

Niall stares dumbly at the mess on the floor.

The sound of the doors swinging open sends him into a flurry of action.

“Morning, Ni!” comes his best friend’s cheery voice.

“Hey, Lou.” Niall kneels down by the broken ice cream cone and starts cleaning it up, hoping that Louis won’t ask.

Louis does.

“Oh, I grabbed some ice cream on the way, and I dropped it by accident.” Niall laughs, avoiding Louis’s eyes in a way that can be misconstrued for sheepishness.

“Niall.”

Louis is suddenly holding his arm and Niall freezes up, thinking that he’s been caught on his lie.

Then Louis says, very seriously, “You went and got ice cream without me?” He laughs, releasing Niall’s arm in favor of clutching his stomach.

“Sorry.” Niall tries to force a smile, but it’s hard to do when his heart is pounding this hard.

Louis notices and clams up immediately, his expression falling. “Shit, Niall. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that—“

“I’m fine.” Niall smiles again, crinkling his eyes a little to make it look more genuine. “We’ll get ice cream afterwards, okay?”

“Okay.” Louis nudges his shoulder. “It’ll be my treat.”

He helps Niall clean up the mess, and they finish just as the first customers start to show up.

It’s a rather busy workday, and Niall has a tendency of forgetting everything else when he’s focusing on one thing, but it’s different today; he keeps thinking of the strange boy that had shown up with ice cream.

_

Harry lies awake that night, looking up at his ceiling and seeing over and over again the way Niall had flinched from him, the way his blue eyes had held a hint of fear.

(Harry knows what fear is. It comes in the form of not being adequate enough, of receiving his tests back and seeing the red marks all the way down the pages, of dumping out his pills and pretending he took them so he didn’t get a new bruise to showcase the next day, of fading into the countless faces that have lived on this earth, of not being remembered.)

(He’s lived with fear his whole life, and if there’s anything that fear doesn’t get to touch with its ugly tendrils, it’s Niall.)

_

Two days later, Niall stops by the library to drop off his books. He’s used to just leaving them on the front desk since the librarian is seldom actually doing her job, but this time, there’s a curly-haired boy waiting there.

Niall recognizes him immediately. He hears Louis’s voice telling him to be careful, and he nods to himself and walks up to the desk.

“Hi,” the other boy mumbles, his green eyes darting back and forth between the books and Niall.

“Hi.” Niall bites his lip, clutching the books to his chest and not quite ready to give them up yet.

The brunet’s fingers are drumming on the countertop, seemingly restless. “I- I’m really sorry about the other day. I do that shit a lot, I can’t help it.”

“It’s fine…”

“What’s your name?”

Niall says it for him.

“Niall,” the boy echoes. A little smile touches his lips. “Niall. Nice to meet you, Niall. I’m Harry, the arse who crushed your ice cream cone the other day.”

It’s just them in the library, as far as Niall can tell. Harry has a nice smile. “I know.” He puts his books on the counter, slides them across, and withdraws his hands and fiddles with them awkwardly. “There you go. I’ll stop bothering you now.”

“You’re not bothering me.” Harry starts scanning the books, though his eyes flicker up to Niall.

“I know, but.” Niall chews on his bottom lip, telling his legs to move. They don’t listen. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then don’t say sorry.”

“I’m s—Yeah, okay.”

“There you go.” He thinks that Harry’s smile widens incrementally. Niall is good at picking up on small things like that. It helps him when he looks in the mirror and spots all the imperfections on his own body. Harry finishes scanning the books back into the system and asks, “Are you going to check more out?”

Niall wasn’t planning on it, but he goes back and finds two random ones anyway, just because it buys him five extra minutes in Harry’s presence.

“See you around,” Harry tells him when he hands him his books. “I really am sorry for the way I acted.”

“And I really do forgive you,” Niall says, smiling faintly.

_

When Niall leaves, Harry feels his breath leave with him. He grips the edge of the counter for balance, his heart doing funny little flips. He’s never understood the phrase _butterflies in your stomach_ until now.

They barely know each other, but the sight of Niall makes Harry forget about his grudge against the world. When Harry looks at him, he feels a wave of calm wash over him.

He’s never felt much besides anger. That’s what the pills were for, to make him less of a robot and more of a human being.

But with Niall—

Harry wants to touch his cheek and make him smile and nuzzle his nose and kiss him silly and lay down his jacket over a puddle so Niall doesn’t get his shoes ruined.

Niall makes him feel alive more than any blue pill can, and Harry _wants_ him.

_

The next day, he waits on the curb until Niall disappears into the kitchen. Harry rushes into the diner, places the rose on the counter, and dashes back out before the blond can return.

He comes back later in the day, casually taking a seat in a booth, and Niall comes over to take his order. Harry picks something random from the menu and doesn’t bother hiding his smile when he looks up and sees the flower perched in the front pocket of the boy’s uniform.

He asks him if he would like to go bowling and Niall says yes behind his notepad.

_

In the quiet confines of his bathroom, Niall turns on the faucet and washes his face.

The cover up goes down the drain, and when he looks into the mirror again, the bruise is there on his jaw. It’s been weeks and it’s starting to fade, but it’s still ugly and _he’_ s still ugly.

The nightmares have stopped now, but there’s a lingering uneasiness. He flinches whenever his friends hug him, and though it pains him just as much to see the hurt in their eyes, he knows that they understand.

He thinks that if he told them about Harry, they wouldn’t like it.

But they don’t understand—

They didn’t grow up with parents who always left him alone to stare in a mirror and pick himself apart, wondering why they won’t love him.

With his first relationship, part of him knew that it was wrong, but when you grow up the way he did, you learn to accept love no matter how bad it is, because you become more and more afraid that if you end it, you’ll never be loved again.

_

When Harry smiles at him, Niall feels the familiar warmth of _being wanted_ without the fear that used to come with it.

_

During their first date (at least, Niall likes to think it is), Harry spills his soda and later on accidentally drops his bowling ball.

Niall doesn’t mean to laugh but he does anyway, and when Harry pouts at him, he smiles and apologizes.

“I’ll forgive you because you’re cute,” Harry tells him.

“I’m cute?” Niall peers up at him innocently.

Harry’s eyes flicker down to his mouth, and he doesn’t know what he wants to do, but he stops before it happens – it’s too fast, too soon – and goes to roll his ball.

Niall exhales a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

He thinks the night's been ruined, but then as they're walking home, Harry spots him shivering, takes off his favorite jacket, and offers it to him.

Niall accepts it and when he puts it on, he doesn't just feel warm, but also...safe.

_

“Does he treat you well?”

The question comes suddenly from Louis, who’s helping him close the diner for the day.

Niall isn’t sure how he found out. “Yes,” he says nonetheless.

He doesn’t fail to notice the way Louis’s jaw tightens. “Does he make you happy?”

Niall thinks he’s known all along why Louis never gave up on him, why Louis always stuck by his side. He wishes he could feel the same way, but—

“Yeah,” he replies quietly. “He… He makes me really happy.”

“Then I’m happy.” Louis turns to him, and his eyes are sad, maybe; his tone is anything but. “It’s nice to see you smiling so much again.”

( _I don’t deserve you_ , Niall wants to say desperately, _you could do so much better than me._ )

_

Being with Niall means _feeling_.

Harry’s heart starts beating faster whenever he thinks about him, and when those thoughts come out of nowhere, he puts a hand on his chest and breathes out shakily. Sometimes the pounding hurts, but it’s a change from the apathy he’s felt for nineteen years.

A dark-haired boy comes into the library one day. He’s not there to read, storming up to the front corner and putting his hand down.

Harry learns about the past four months of Niall’s life.

“Don’t you fucking dare hurt him,” the stranger hisses, and a month ago, Harry would have smashed his fist into this fucker’s face, but they’re talking about Niall now.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he says, and the honesty in his voice surprises even himself.

_

Harry makes a habit of walking Niall home. One night, before the blond retreats into his apartment, he calls, “Hey, Niall?”

Niall turns around, and Harry’s eyes flicker to his jaw, wondering if he could brush the cover up away and find a bruise underneath.

“I really like you. I- I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that, but I do. You might not think you’re good enough, but—“

( _stupid useless worthless boy why the fuck can’t you do anything right—)_

“—I think you’re perfect.”

_

Being with Harry is easy.

Once, they run into each other in the grocery store, and they end up walking together. They pass by the small cosmetics area and a million mirrors seem to stare at him, but when Niall looks into them, he doesn’t see the crookedness of his teeth or the lines under his eyes or the fading mark on his cheek. He only sees him and Harry.

_

He makes more trips to the library, but not really to check out more books. He likes reading, but he likes the curly-haired boy that works there more.

“You’re not even reading these, are you?” Harry says musingly as he scans the latest ones.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Niall accepts his books, and while Harry hands them to him, their fingers brush against each other’s.

He leaves without saying goodbye and heads home immediately.

He tosses his books on his couch and runs for the bathroom and puts the sink on the hottest setting and thrusts his hands under the burning water.

 _Don’t let him find out someone else touched you_ , he thinks hysterically, scrubbing his hands raw, _don’t let him find out, please, god, don’t let him find out because—_

_“—I think you’re perfect.”_

He suddenly becomes acutely aware of the pain, the throbbing of his hand.

Niall jerks away from the sink.

_

He’s in tears when he calls Harry’s phone, and he doesn’t think when he asks the other to come over.

Harry is there within minutes, and when he arrives, Niall is curled up on the couch, crying and holding his hands to his chest.

“Nialler,” he whispers, approaching him slowly, “what’s wrong, what’s happened?”

Niall’s hands are trembling and red, and Harry reaches out, takes them into his.

Niall cries harder, and in between his sobs, he’s mumbling something about hating himself and not being good enough.

“No, you’re not. You’re not, Niall. You’re fine.”

Harry holds him as he runs his fingers gently under cooler water, and by then, Niall’s gone quiet save for the occasional sniffles.

“Please don’t hurt yourself again,” Harry murmurs, his voice cracking towards the end. He lifts Niall’s hands to his lips and kisses his knuckles, one for each century he’ll love him and more.

_

They talk after that.

Harry tells Niall about how he grew up; the pills; the apathy; how he ran away like a coward; how he’s prone to fits of anger but when he’s with Niall, he doesn’t want to _hurt_ , he wants to protect.

Niall tells Harry about his past relationship; the nightmares; why he never let just anyone touch him before; his constant fear of not being good enough but how Harry makes him forget about all of it.

“Could we work?” he whispers afterwards, voice raspy from crying.

“I don’t know,” Harry admits softly, because the last time he lied was weeks ago, “but if you’d be okay with it…I want to try.”

Niall’s arms come up around his shoulders, uncertain but also feeling more sure than he’s ever felt in his whole life: “I want to try too.”

_

(Six months later, Niall finds himself waking to the feeling of a warm body pressed behind him and a protective arm curled around his waist.

He shifts around, because the sheets have been kicked to the floor and it’s cold and he wants some of that warmth. He presses closer, listening to the thrum of a steady heartbeat.

Harry wakes not long after, leaving a trail of lazy kisses down his cheek and murmuring affectionately against Niall’s lips, “Good morning, beautiful.”)


End file.
